SAFS professor Kristin Laidre is featured in UW Today:
‘Polar bears depend on sea ice for essential tasks like hunting and breeding. As Arctic sea ice disappears due to climate change, bears across the species’ 19 subpopulations are feeling the strain.
But even as scientists try to quantify just how much melting sea ice is affecting polar bears, another group that depends on the iconic mammal for subsistence also is at risk of losing an important nutritional and economic resource.

SAFS professor Julian Olden is featured in UW Today:
‘As humans build roads, construct buildings and develop land for agriculture, freshwater ecosystems respond ― but not always in the ways one might expect.
A new study by the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University finds that some fish lose out while others benefit as urban and agricultural development encroaches on streams and rivers across the United States.

The Whole U Faculty Friday series features SAFS professor Tim Essington:
‘To deliver the perfect presentation, prepare to embrace your mistakes.
That’s the philosophy Tim Essington brings to Applied Improvisation for Science Communication, a course the professor of aquatic and fishery sciences developed to help scientists more confidently and effectively communicate their research.
“Giving a good talk isn’t just what you put on your slides, it’s conveying a story about your research,” Essington says.

SAFS post-doc Rachel Hovel and SAFS professor Tom Quinn are featured in UW Today:
‘One of Alaska’s most abundant freshwater fish species is altering its breeding patterns in response to climate change. This could impact the ecology of northern lakes, which already acutely feel the effects of a changing climate.
That’s the main finding of a recent University of Washington study published in Global Change Biology that analyzed reproductive patterns of three-spine stickleback fish over half a century in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.

SAFS grad Timothy Cline and SAFS professors Daniel Schindler and Ray Hilborn are featured in UW Today:
‘Fishing communities can survive ― and even thrive ― as fish abundance and market prices shift if they can catch a variety of species and nimbly move from one fishery to the next.
These findings, published Jan. 16 in Nature Communications, draw upon 34 years of data collected in more than 100 fishing communities in Alaska that depend on fishing for livelihoods, cultural traditions and daily subsistence.

SAFS Prof. Tim Essington is featured in UW Today:
‘The acidification of the ocean expected as seawater absorbs increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will reverberate through the West Coast’s marine food web, but not necessarily in the ways you might expect, new research shows.
Dungeness crabs, for example, will likely suffer as their food sources decline. Dungeness crab fisheries valued at about $220 million annually may face a strong downturn over the next 50 years, according to the research published Jan.

SAFS alum Donna Hauser and SAFS professor Kristin Laidre are featured in UW Today:
‘The annual migration of some beluga whales in Alaska is altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic, while other belugas do not appear to be affected.
A new study led by the University of Washington finds that as Arctic sea ice takes longer to freeze up each fall due to climate change, one population of belugas mirrors that timing and delays its migration south by up to one month.

SAFS Professor Julia Parrish is featured on Huffington Post:
‘The puffins were not supposed to be there. Though the birds are a common sight on the Alaskan island of St. Paul, they typically fly the coop before October, heading south to overwinter.
But a few bedraggled birds had been discovered on the wind-swept, rocky shoreline of the North Pacific island during the first week of October.

SAFS Prof. Tim Essington is featured in UW Today:
‘Two University of Washington professors are leading an effort to help U.S. fisheries consider the larger marine environment, rather than just a single species, when managing a fishery.
Tim Essington, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, and Phil Levin, a UW professor of practice and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy, head a taskforce convened by the Lenfest Ocean Program to guide managers on implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management.

I recently entered a small video contest in order to promote Iliamna Lake in Southwest Alaska which is one of the research areas of the Alaska Salmon Program. If it wins it would help fund some of our future research in that area.

If you get a moment, check out the video and give it a vote! It’s really easy.